1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink receiving unit and an inkjet printer including the ink receiving unit.
2. Discussion of the Background
Recently, inkjet printers for printing on a variety of materials as media other than paper have been developed. For example, an inkjet printer capable of printing on a mesh-like medium or a fibrous medium has been developed.
Mesh-like media and fibrous media have coarse texture as compared to paper. Therefore, if printing is conducted on such a medium by an inkjet printer, the medium allows ink ejected onto the surface thereof to seep through the medium to the back side of the medium. As the ink seeps through to the back of the medium, the ink may be deposited on the printing apparatus, causing contamination of medium. Therefore, in case of printing on the aforementioned medium, it is essential to takes measures to cope with ink droplets dripping from the back of the medium.
As an example of a coping method, such a method is conceivable to dispose a gutter-like ink receiver for receiving ink droplets dripping from the back of the medium. In this method, the ink receiver may be arranged below the inkjet head to have a slant. The slant lets the ink dripping from the medium flow under its own weight to remove (run off) the ink. Further, such a method is also conceivable to dispose a sponge for absorbing the ink on the gutter of the ink receiver and to replace suitably the sponge with new one.
However, it is difficult to remove all ink only by using the gutter-like receiver having a slant. Ink may remain on the ink receiver and become solidified. Further, if the solidified ink is stacked and/or blocks the flow of ink, the back of the medium may be contaminated by ink remaining on the ink receiver. If the medium is contaminated, the image quality on the medium is degraded, thus spoiling the medium.
In case of disposing the sponge for absorbing the ink, the timing for replacement depends on the frequency of use of machine. Since the absorption property of the sponge deteriorates due to ink fixated to the sponge, it is inconvenient.
Due to the aforementioned problems, these methods require considerable labor for periodical manual maintenance. Accordingly, there is a demand to provide a more suitable method for handling ink dripping from the back of the medium. Therefore, there is a need to provide an ink receiving unit and a printing apparatus capable of solving the aforementioned problems.
Conventionally, for example, there is known an arrangement of an inkjet printer addressing the object of quickly and reliably collecting waste ink without contaminating the circumference (for example, see JP-A-H11-48498). However, this arrangement relates to collection of waste ink during maintenance conducted by discharging the ink from each nozzle at the time of non-printing. Further, the collection of waste ink is conducted at a place out of the printing range where the printing is conducted on media. That is, the arrangement is not capable of suitably collecting ink dripping from the back of the medium during printing. Therefore, the aforementioned problems cannot be solved even using this arrangement. The contents of JP-A-H11-48498 are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.